4362 THE ZooLtocist—Marcu, 1875. 
amongst the grass roots, but the supply being only limited they 
shortly got so feeble as to be easily run down and taken by hand. 
The smaller birds came to the stack and fold yards, and, feeding 
amicably together, we might see at one time under the rick-sides 
bramblings, snow buntings, greenfinches, chaffinches, yellow, corn 
and blackheaded buntings, tree and common sparrows, blackbirds, 
thrushes, larks and starlings, wrens and waterhens. Snipe were 
very numerous, and crowded together around the unfrozen springs 
and small open runlets; latterly they became so lean that I desisted 
from shooting them. Woodcocks left the covers, and could always 
be found in some one or other of the narrow deep ditches, at spots 
where the main under-drain outfalls debouched, a little wet patch 
remaining unfrozen from the dripping of the tile: when put up 
they flew a few hundred yards with a feeble and owl-like flight, 
and then dropped again. The herons were reduced to great 
extremities, and I several times stood and watched, at only a few 
yards distance, one with slow and measured tread walking the 
drains, so tame as to be almost regardless of my presence, and 
when fairly put up not leaving the drain, but after a flight of a 
hundred yards or so, again settling. The wild ducks kept their 
condition better, although they too lost considerably in weight 
between the early and latter part of the month: the finest, a 
mallard, 1 weighed during this period, slightly exceeded three 
pounds eight ounces, but this was a remarkably fine and fat 
bird. 
On the 29th, 30th, and $3lst, when the cold was extreme, 
hundreds of feeble, worn-out and starved birds succumbed to the 
weather and were frozen to death, many being frozen on their 
perches during the night, were found dead under the trees in 
the plantations, or extended rigid and stiff on the flat boughs 
of the spruce. I heard of one instance in which as many as fifty 
larks were found all in a heap in a turnip-field frozen to death: 
they had apparently collected together for warmth, but had not 
been able to withstand the intense severity of the night. 
The month of January has been a direct contrast to this—mild 
open weather, with the thermometer standing during the day at 
fifty-four to fifty-six degrees, and at night at forty-six degrees; 
the wind generally from south, south-west or west; the air warm, 
close and heavy. So far, none of the innumerable peewit, golden 
plover, and other birds which left us in December have returned. 
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